How to successfully wage war?

[Furios]

It seems that even seemingly 'easy' wars are full of problems like:
> Territory isn't properly captured, captured territory just reverts back to the region I am at war with.
>Units seem to never have enough supply.

[GIJoe597]

The somewhat curt answer to your question is, do not allow the ai to manage your units.

[BanDHMO]

As GIJoe said, don't rely on AI unless you don't care about your people/units.

I recommend playing a smaller country and learning by participating in a proxy war.

Vietnam is perfect because you'll just face guerillas, so you will have control of the battle through your units' superior speed. Then, in Korea, you can build up on your experience by facing an actual army.

Even though I have hundreds of hours in various SR versions, this is still the only way I play. It's just so much more enjoyable and easier to be, say, Mexico, Spain, or Portugal, and join in NATO wars, than single-handedly controlling something like US, Russia, or China.

[Furios]

Originally posted by BanDHMO:

As GIJoe said, don't rely on AI unless you don't care about your people/units.

I recommend playing a smaller country and learning by participating in a proxy war.

Vietnam is perfect because you'll just face guerillas, so you will have control of the battle through your units' superior speed. Then, in Korea, you can build up on your experience by facing an actual army.

Even though I have hundreds of hours in various SR versions, this is still the only way I play. It's just so much more enjoyable and easier to be, say, Mexico, Spain, or Portugal, and join in NATO wars, than single-handedly controlling something like US, Russia, or China.

I'm playing as the
Ok thanks. I'm play as the dominian republic to learn the basics.

[GIJoe597]

If you are willing to manually control your units there are a few things you can do to try and alleviate others from taking land of your enemy,

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by JeremyC™:

Ok thanks. I'm play as the dominian republic to learn the basics.

I used DR to learn at one point as well. War with Haiti is hilarious fun.
Haiti has a starting air force way bigger and more advanced than a small destitute country should have. If you don't know about it and aren't prepared, they'll teach you the power of air support. ;)

DR's a neat country, but you do start off unaligned, so to participate in proxy wars you have to cheat for money and use it to bribe allies into liking you.

The other thing you will discover is that DR and other countries of similar size are both behind in tech and are too small/poor to pay for research needed to catch up to developed nations. This means you'll have an inefficient economy and be unable to build modern units. Even if you cheat for money and buy all the techs you can, you will still be stuck behind the non-tradable techs, and if you try to research them yourself, your tiny economy will overheat and you'll get out of control inflation. Also, manpower can be a problem with such a small population.

Personally, I like Mexico or Canada right now. It's big enough to afford manpower/research/etc, but doesn't have any far flung colonies to watch, and if you ally with the US, all your enemies will be on the other side of the world, while your powerful ally will share a border with you. Mexico is smaller and more centralized around Ciudad de Mexico to where it feels like a small country if you just ignore your more remote provinces and treat them like a buffer. While Canada starts in an alliance and is also more advanced, but it's huge and important cities are spread widely, so I end up constantly scrolling back and forth to see my country.

Also, one more hint for making somewhat larger countries like SA, CA, MX, etc playable: start the game without any units. You'll save yourself the initial hassle of sorting through their existing militaries and instead build up your own over time and position the right forces in logical districts that you'll decide on yourself. Then the bigger army will make sense for you and be easier to manage than a hodge-podge of randomly dropped outdated starting battalions would be.

EDIT: also, DR in particular is a dictatorship, so it will be harder to build and keep good relations with NATO. Doesn't matter so much if you are cheating for money and giving it away to make them like you, but otherwise, something to keep in mind.